Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson

Nigella's latest offering, Nigella Express, delivers the goods.

The Domestic Goddess wants to leave you time for a bath, a drink, and a little conversation with your friends before you serve dinner.

At the end of an episode of Nigella Bites, the cooking show that made the bosomy British former literary editor Nigella Lawson into a self-described gastro-porn star, she changed into a satiny robe and climbed into bed with a bowl of pasta. It was a gimmick that worked on all sorts of levels, and told you that despite the 30 minutes of stirring, chopping, and licking that had just elapsed, here was a girl who would rather eat pasta in bed than anything else, and really, wouldn't you rather, too?

Most Popular

She was part of England's literary elite—cooking lamb for Salman Rushdie in the early days of the fatwa, her hair caught fire in the oven—but also the single mother of two children, trying to get dinner on the table and have a good time doing it. Now she's married to Charles Saatchi, the advertising mogul and art collector, whose presence is felt just a tiny bit in this, her sixth book. A recipe for lamb, mint, and red currant salad—a reworking, she says, of the hot and sour beef salads of Southeast Asia—is something he loves, even though, as she writes, "my husband is not someone who would normally regard a salad as a treat for supper."

Nigella Express: 130 Recipes for Good Food, Fast is a very weird and appealing book, a mishmash container of crêpes suzettes, quesadillas, sake sea bass, and something called Rapid Ragu, which is a ragu made from ground lamb, lentils, pancetta, onions, and tomatoes. When she is feeling fragile, Nigella writes, she likes to eat it in a cereal bowl, topped with grated cheddar.

Supermarket shortcuts—canned beans, precut vegetables—pop up here and there, but not overwhelmingly so. What gives her meals their "express" quality is mostly technique, like making stuff ahead, or throwing everything into a pot and cooking it at once.

But I get the sense that the book's moniker is beside the point. Introducing her recipe for Mellow Meatballs, made with organic beef mini meatballs found in the supermarket, Nigella writes, "It's just a case of making life easier on yourself; frankly, no one else is going to."